The phrase “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” was coined by American computer programmer Eric S. Raymond to distinguish two different approaches to the development of software. Google has unwittingly highlighted the tensions between these two approaches to social networks with its recent mass suspension of accounts.

Some have said that Google+ is more than a new platform, it’s the glue that ties together Google communication products. I definitely think this is true, we’ll just have to wait and see how the masses adapt. Will Google+ take over the world as Facebook has? Not sure.

Want more info about Google+? Here’s a cheat sheet from the Business Insider. The Insider promises to be posting a weekly cheat sheet, so check their site for more info.

For a long time, I’ve used Twitter to help pull together ideas. Since jumping on Google+ however, I’ve found that so many more people respond, and that there’s a great range of potential answers given to questions. Because comments exist under the post, I don’t lose them in my stream the way I do in Twitter. Here’s my question and some of the answers I got on Google Plus:

First off, when you start, you won’t have any people in your Circles (which is how Google Plus organizes people), but some people might have already added you. You can click on the “Circles” Tab and that will show you which Circles are prebuilt for you. I renamed all of mine. You can do the same by double-clicking them, then selecting Rename. I did this so that people wouldn’t be put off by terms like “Acquaintance.” Mine have all kinds of weird names like “Keepers” and “Bacon Filchers” and “Attention Getters.” Name them however you want. Your Circles are yours. It’s how you view people’s info coming into you.

Google+ has immense potential, but it's still early in its beta process (Google calls it a "field test"), leaving room for it to falter. Ultimately, its success will depend upon sucking millions of users away from Facebook.

Google+ doesn’t have an inbuilt way to transfer your Facebook friends over to the new social app, but since Facebook is clearly dead and everyone is on Google+ nowadays it’s best to get your contacts moved over before Facebook’s servers are switched off for good.

Parts of it certainly seem to appear similar to what we’ve seen before. One significant component is a continuous scroll called “the stream” that’s an alternative to Facebook’s news feed — a hub of personalized content. It has a companion called “Sparks,” related to one’s specified interests. Together they are designed to be a primary attention-suck of Google users. Google hopes that eventually people will gravitate to the stream in the same way that members...